LITMIR.BIZ

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backwards.

      Shocked beyond movement, Breeanna sat, staring at the body.

      A man, gun held two-fisted in front of him, stepped out from the hedge and walked past her car. When he reached the body he bent over, slipped his gun into a holster under his suit coat, and efficiently frisked the corpse. He straightened, and walked back to the car. He tried to open the driver's door, then realising it was locked, knocked on the window.

      The sound shook Breeanna out of her daze. She slid the window down. The engine hummed quietly, a normal sound in a far from normal night.

      'You're safe now, Miss.' The words were innocuous, the tone neutral, but Breeanna sensed something in the man that … Unease gnawed into her stomach. She made no move to open the door. The man bent towards the window. With the light coming through the front doorway behind him, his features were in shadow, but the glow of the dash lights revealed deep-set eyes above a straight nose and wide lips pulled thin as though trying to hide his impatience. An irrelevant thought struck Breeanna that in his younger days he must have been quite good-looking.

      He held out his hand, open-palmed. 'You can give it to me now.'

      It.

      The man now lying dead on her front path wanted it. Was prepared to kill her for it. Whatever it was. She forced herself to remember. A book. From the professor, he'd said. She didn't have it, didn't know what it was supposed to be. But one man was dead, and the professor was lying in a hospital bed, so terrified that it was a wonder he hadn't had another stroke.

      'I'll take care of it. See it gets to the right people.' Impatience now tinged his voice. Breeanna felt waves of greed and excitement emanating from him. Like a dog that has the scent of blood and wants to kill again, she thought, and realised that his hand was moving closer to his gun.

      'Right,' she breathed, surprised she sounded so calm. Pretending to reach for her bag, which she'd flung onto the passenger seat, she slipped the automatic gear into reverse and pushed hard on the accelerator.

      Tyres screeching, the car shot backwards up the short driveway, throwing the man off balance, then slammed out into the street. Breeanna hit the brakes, pulled the gearstick into Drive, and scorched rubber on the bitumen as she sped away.

      'Get this mess cleaned up. Quickly.' Vaughn Waring growled as he kicked the body lying in front of Breeanna's patio. Shooting the idiot who would have killed the Montgomery woman had been necessary, but going up to her afterwards in an attempt to win her trust had been a risk. A risk that hadn't paid off. Not only had she been scared off, but she might have seen enough of his face to recognise him again. At the moment, that gave her an advantage he preferred she didn't have.

      'I'll get the car.' A man had emerged from behind the hedge and joined Vaughn, who turned and strode quickly up the driveway. Vaughn's frustration hissed out through clenched teeth. At least that was one thing he could count on - Mark Talbert was as efficient as he was quiet. Good qualities in a subordinate who needed to carry out orders without questioning.

      Quickly, Vaughn walked into the house, took out his handkerchief, and used it to switch off the light and pull the door closed behind him as he went back outside.

      Only the reversing lights indicated the presence of the dark car moving smoothly into the driveway. The boot popped open. Mark Talbert emerged from the driver's seat, spread a blanket across the floor of the boot, then lifted the body from the path and placed it on the blanket.

      Vaughn unwound a hose from a tap at the corner of the house and sprayed the path. Fresh blood would dilute quickly and soak into the soil beneath the hedge. And from what he'd witnessed, it was doubtful there would be anyone inquiring as to the whereabouts of the dead man. Well, certainly not inquiring with the police, he thought. He rewound the hose, and got into the passenger seat.

      As the car moved quietly out of the driveway, Vaughn scanned the neighbouring houses. In a street of high dividing fences, thick shrubbery and established trees, it was feasible to assume his gunshot could have been mistaken for a car back-firing, but it was wiser to be cautious. Not all neighbours kept to themselves. He was relieved to see no curtain pulled aside, no person coming out into their front yard to investigate.

      Vaughn took out his mobile phone. If Breeanna Montgomery thought she had eluded him, he smiled grimly, she was very much mistaken.

      Five minutes later, Breeanna parked in front of an all-nighter cafe and sat, hands shaking on the steering wheel, trying to calm the pounding in her chest and the thoughts spinning furiously in her mind.

      Whatever Professor Raymond was supposed to have given her was evidently worth killing for. She cursed herself for not taking him more seriously. His fear had been real, that was obvious, but until tonight she'd tried to believe it was the fear of a man who'd escaped possible death and now had to face a life as a quadriplegic. His implication of her family troubled her greatly, but she had had no reason to confront them. Until tonight. Until it had become obvious that the professor's fears were based on reality.

      She could go to the police, but if Paige were involved … Breeanna sighed. While they weren't as close as she would have liked, Paige was still her half-sister, and Breeanna loved her. The instinct to protect her sibling was too strong to ignore. If only she knew how to contact her father. She was sure he could work out what had driven Professor Raymond to make such an accusation. The professor had accused her uncle, James Montgomery as well, but as Breeanna knew, the two men barely tolerated one another so that wasn't surprising.

      The events of the past five days flashed through her mind, and she cursed herself for choosing to ignore the feeling of unease she'd harboured since the professor's accident. Perhaps if she'd had the courage to acknowledge her instincts, she would have been able to prevent what had happened tonight.

      A young couple emerged from the cafe, and the aroma of their takeaway food reminded Breeanna she hadn't eaten since breakfast. The last few days she'd worked through her lunch break, trying to cover the professor's work as well as her own. But at the moment food wasn't a high priority. She knew the man who'd killed her attacker would be looking for her, and she guessed he would kill again in order to possess what the professor had supposedly given her. Which meant she couldn't take refuge with her friends as that would endanger them. She'd considered and discarded the idea he was a police officer, everything about him had indicated the opposite.

      So where could she hide while she tried to make contact with her father? She thought of a book she'd read several years before about a woman on the run who was taught by an ex-prostitute how to hide so she couldn't be found by the men chasing her. Money. She would need as much cash as she could get her hands on. Several buildings up, lights illuminated an automatic teller machine.

      Quickly exiting her car, Breeanna strode to the ATM and withdrew her daily limit. She looked at the crisp notes in her hand. One thousand dollars. Not enough, but it would have to do for now. She walked back to the cafe. Though her stomach was churning, she knew she would have to eat.

      The shop was warm and smelled of cooking oil and chips and sizzling steak. Breeanna placed and paid for her order, then sat at a corner table. As the minutes ticked by she tried to formulate a plan, but her thoughts kept being distracted by the memory of the intruder's face as it exploded.

      A reflection of moving red and blue on the window caught her eye. A police car was slowing down outside the shop. It paused briefly behind her car. She stared at it for a few seconds before realising that the officer in the passenger seat was speaking into a radio handset as he looked at her number plate. Normally, Breeanna would think herself paranoid getting alarmed because a cop was giving her car the once-over, but tonight her skin crawled with apprehension.

      She watched the car drive slowly forward, watched it turn right at the next intersection and disappear. Relaxing was out of the question. She was going with her instincts now, and they told her the police hadn't gone away. They were waiting. Waiting out of sight. And she had a terrible suspicion she knew who they were waiting for.

      The cafe attendant called out to her as she ran for the door. She grabbed the proffered white paper bag and was in her car within seconds.

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